Embark Studios finds itself in a sticky spot these days. ARC Raiders remains a pretty popular game, but it’s a long way from where it peaked, and the sentiments are plummeting across social media for several reasons, most of which are typically centered around PvE and a slower update schedule.
Once upon a time, though, ARC Raiders was so saturated with players that Embark Studios was capturing 100 billion data events every day, securing a whopping 30 terabytes of information in near real-time, in a bid to understand every millimeter of their game. They were tracking your every step, and they continue to do so today.
Embark Studios Has Masses of Data
It’s a safe bet that every studio out there with a multiplayer-focused game is capturing a similar level of data, but Embark Studios has been a little more open with just how much information it captures regarding the average player.
At a recent Nexon conference, Mattias Andersson, a data engineer at Embark, explained:
We track every bullet in these games. We track where the players are. We track whenever a bullet hits something. We have miniguns in our game, at least in The Finals, so this is a lot of bullets to keep track of.
We were tracking more than 100 billion events per day when Arc Raiders was at its peak. That is 30 terabytes of data per day. And we do all this with less than two second latency into BigQuery.
As soon as you fire a bullet, two seconds later, I can run a query in BigQuery and find out if you hit or not.
(Thanks to GamesRadar for the spot)
It’s scary to understand how much data the average studio can collect, and how fast it’s available, but that’s the wonder of modern technology.
When Andersson talks about peak, he’s likely referring to late last year, when ARC Raiders was absolutely dominating charts worldwide and standing firm as one of 2025’s most-played games. The extraction adventure title would go on to sell millions of copies, but from around March 2026 onwards, things started turning sour.
Are you still playing ARC Raiders? Let us know what you think about the game now on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the new screenshots from the ‘Last of Us’ multiplayer game, and for even more Insider Gaming delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for our newsletter
Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
More from Grant Taylor-Hill
Comments